The Santa Barbara Independent takes advantage of the start of the New Year to combine the paper's list of the best of last year with a look at the best of what's to come. There Will Be Blood is among the best films of 2007, and among the city's best live shows last year, the Independent's Josef Woodard lists both Wilco's concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl in support of Sky Blue Sky and the Pat Metheny / Brad Mehldau Quartet gig at Campbell Hall. For this week's Show of the Week, Woodard names Bill Frisell's return to the city's Lobero Theatre, where "the always intriguing and poetic guitarist" will perform on Saturday with drummer Joey Baron. Woodard recalls Bill's 2004 performance at the Lobero as "one of the more enchanted musical encounters in the long history" of the Theatre, and says that Frisell "continues to surprise and delight," citing the guitarist's "dynamic" 2006 Nonesuch release with the "inspired" Ron Carter and Paul Motian.

Wilco will be on hand when Australia's award-winning Byron Bay Blues Festival makes its way across the Tasman Sea to launch a New Zealand offshoot in 2008 called BluesfestNZ (aka the Coromandel Peninsula Blues and Roots Music Festival 2008). The band will be joining the line-up for the inaugural event as part of its March 2008 tour of Australia and New Zealand.

Among the nearly 10,000 foreign visitors who'll head to Glasgow this frigid January for the Celtic Connections festival will be two Nonesuch artists: k.d. lang and Punch Brothers—whom Scotland's Sunday Herald has dubbed "hot young Americana dudes"—each performing a set at what the paper says is "the best party in the world."

The Savannah Music Festival has announced its 2008 schedule, and Audra McDonald will be among the performers at this, Georgia's largest musical arts festival. McDonald will perform on March 28 as part of the Divine Divas series. The festival will run from March 20 through April 5, 2008.

Youssou N'Dour performed the closing show of his current US tour before a sold-out crowd at the Somerville Theatre, outside Boston. According to the Herald, "the singer with the astounding pipes" led the audience through "two sweaty, dance-inducing hours" of songs throughout his career, including his latest album, Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take). And by the end of the show, writes the Herald's Bob Young, "N’Dour left no doubt that he—and Africa—still rule the world of scintillating powerhouse grooves." In last night's tour closer, "N’Dour showed why he’s one of pop music’s most commanding performers."

When Wilco plays to a hometown crowd for five nights this February, it'll be changing things up a bit. Each night, the band will play a different set, featuring songs from throughout its decade-plus career. Or, as frontman Jeff Tweedy says in Billboard, the band will "attempt the 'complete Wilco' and try to clear out the dusty corners of the catalog that we haven't attended to in a while." The Chicago sets will take place February 15–16 and 18–20. They mark the start of a US tour that will take the band through the Northeast and the South before returning to the Midwest in March.

The national touring company of the recent Broadway production of Sweeney Todd has been playing to audiences north of border in Toronto for the past month. The show now moves back to the States for a few days in Columbus, Ohio, beginning tomorrow night at the Palace Theatre. The Columbus Dispatch sat down for an in-depth interview with the tour's scene-stealing Mrs. Lovett, Judy Kaye, whom director John Doyle lauds for her "terrific singing voice and immaculate comedy timing," essential attributes in this role as the murderous barber's partner in crime.

World Music/CRASHarts presents Youssou N'Dour and the Super Étoile band this Monday, December 10, at the Somerville Theatre. Today's Boston Globe previews the next phase of the organization's winter and spring schedule, which includes a broad range of artists from around the world, from Toumani Diabaté's pan-African Symmetric Orchestra, also at the Somerville, on February 2, to Laurie Anderson, who will bring her new piece, Homeland, to the Boston Opera House on March 29.

Among the many roles Youssou N'Dour has come to play, he has come to be known "as one of the planet's true superstars and a beacon of African pride," says the Chicago Tribune. At Wednesday's Chicago House of Blues show, N'Dour's singing was "as strong and rich as it's ever been," and his band, Super Étoile de Dakar proved itself "the rare band entirely deserving of the 'super,' perfectly composed to push ahead but constantly poised for stop-on-a-dime shifts."

Toronto's new Luminato Festival, which earlier this year, in its inaugural run, presented the world premiere of Philip Glass's Book of Longing, has unveiled its 2008 program, and the Globe and Mail calls it "an ambitious agenda of dance, music, theatre, film, and visual arts." On the bill for the June 6–15 event are the Canadian premieres of Nunavut by Kronos Quartet and Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, and Laurie Anderson's Homeland. 

SFJAZZ has announced the line-up for its ninth annual spring season, and the Brad Mehldau Trio is on the bill. The new season, which runs from March 6 through June 20, includes a performance by Brad and his trio on June 6 at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre June 6.